Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Mordecai Brown

Page 164

sacrifice fly. Brown didn’t scowl. He just asked for the ball back.

In the second inning he found something; maybe rhythm, maybe memory, maybe just the stubbornness that had carried him through two decades of baseball. His curve dipped late. His fastball, never super fast found corners. Danville hitters began muttering.

By the fifth inning he was in full command, the crowd leaning forward every time the ball left his hand. He struck out a man on a pitch that seemed to fall off a table. He got a double play on a slow roller that died halfway to the mound. He tipped his cap to the crowd, not out of showmanship but out of habit.

The Browns still couldn’t hit, of course. They scratched out a run in the seventh on a misplayed fly ball and a bunt that stayed fair by sheer luck. But Brown held Danville to those two early runs, and Terre Haute won 3–2 on a ninth inning error that no one deserved but everyone accepted.

Evening on the Steps

After the game he sat on the wooden steps outside the clubhouse, the sun low and orange, the cicadas beginning their nightly sermon. His arm throbbed; not sharply, but with that deep, familiar ache that told him he’d done something worth doing.